WTAM Local News

PHOTOS: Battle of Lake Erie

(Put-In-Bay) - Two hundred years later, Americans didn't give up the ships and again won on the waters of Lake Erie.

A fleet of tall ships on Monday re-enacted the Battle of Lake Erie, two centuries after the U.S.-British clash considered a turning point in the War of 1812.

Fifteen ships took part in the celebration of Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry's capture of a British fleet near Put-In-Bay.

The U.S. Coast Guard patrolled a safety zone.

In some cases, the boat crews carried out their mission in the same spirit that the Coast Guard's predecessor, the Revenue Cutter Service, did during the War of 1812.

The crews patrolled a safety enforcement zone to keep personal craft at least 500 yards from the more than a dozen tall ships that took part in the re-enactment.

Technology, however, changed things a little bit on Monday. The Port Clinton News-Herald reports Perry's re-enactor didn't switch ships using a longboat, he used a motorboat, while helicopters and airplanes circled overhead.

This time around, people took pictures of the battle — many with cellphone cameras.